The Winner of Streaming

Netflix, Disney+, or Hulu? Well, it depends who you ask.

2016 was a simpler time. A raging lunatic wasn’t the United States president. TikTok? You mean that Kesha song? No one was saying the word “yeet” yet. Oh, and most people only used like, three different streaming services and that was that.

It’s 2020 and of course there’s nearly 50 different services. At least it seems that overwhelming.

Luckily for us consumers (not), production companies like NBC, Warner Bros, Disney, etc realized that, instead of licensing content to companies like Netflix or Hulu, they can just publish content on their own services. So in the last two years, Disney launched Disney+, Warner Bros gave us HBO Max, NBC gave us Peacock, and ViacomCBS announced Paramount+ for 2021.

The question still remains: is anyone…ahead?

Netflix still isn’t profitable. They’re spending billions on content, attempting to save themselves from their inevitable collapse when they are forced to produce original content. They’ve been focusing on a few dramas and sci-fi shows like Stranger Things, they’ve stepped into comedy — although they consistently cancel great shows prematurely (BoJack Horseman, rip).

Even with constant debt, Netflix is still worth something. The service pioneered…